


Like father, like daughter

by the_empty_man



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, and kate is trying to bring her up in the best possible way, just a short thing of me having feelings about Eiffel's daughter, she's just a sweet little girl who hardly knows anything about her father
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 14:43:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12083226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_empty_man/pseuds/the_empty_man
Summary: Anne wants to be like her daddy when she grows up.





	Like father, like daughter

Kate Garcia doesn’t want to tell Anne all about her father until she’s older. A story like that is too heavy for a little girl to carry. And as much as she hates Doug and everything he did, she doesn’t want her daughter to grow up thinking her father was (or perhaps is) a monster. She’s not sure whether to talk about Eiffel in the past tense.

Anne’s a curious girl, her hands always dancing with questions, her wide eyes excited for answers. So Kate gives Anne occasional snippets about her dad: your daddy had curly dark hair and brown eyes (yes, like you)… he had to go away for a long time… he liked films and radio… he had a lot of problems… your daddy loved you but he wasn’t very good at looking after the people he loved… we decided it would be better for me and him not to live together anymore… I haven’t spoken to him in years… we can’t visit him because he went to space. She regrets letting that last bit slip, because after that it’s the only fact about her father Anne seems to remember.

After that, Anne gets every astronomy book out of the children’s library. She looks up at the sky and asks which star Dad is on. (Kate doesn’t know. There’s a lot she doesn’t know.) She asks for a telescope for her ninth birthday. She shows strangers the signs for rocket, fly and star. She does all her school projects on space and uses a whole roll of tinfoil when they have to dress up as what they want to be. She writes a letter to NASA which Kate intercepts and doesn’t post.

Kate worries that the obsession isn’t healthy, that the more Anne idolises her father, the more the truth will break her heart. But Kate doesn’t know how she could kill the starstruck joy in her daughter’s face. Hopefully she’ll grow out of it. Plenty of children go through a space-obsessed phase. Kate tries to steer Anne towards other interests: have you seen the dinosaur books over there? Do you want to go to dancing lessons? Would you like a firefighter’s outfit? But Anne’s fascination with outer space only grows.

The worst part is how much she likes telling other people that her daddy is a astronaut. Adults mostly just nod and smile, because it doesn’t do any harm and it’s not like she’s the first kid with a absent parent who’s made up a story like that. Some of the other children believe her, which earns her a hint of jealous respect.

Then a kid overhears something from their parents, hushed tones about ‘that poor deaf girl’ and 'an awful accident’. That child doesn’t get the full story and they don’t fully understand, but the news spreads with a speed only possible across playgrounds.

“Your dad is a drunk,” a boy taunts Anne. “They locked him up for crashing a car. He probably died in jail.” Anne bites back her tears because it can’t be true. Her daddy is a hero.

She asks her mom as soon as she gets home. “Who is my dad? An astronaut or a criminal?”

Anne watches expectantly as Kate pauses for a long time. She thinks of her daughter’s father, Douglas Eiffel: hero and criminal, astronaut and alcoholic, boyfriend and nemesis, human and monster, protector and destroyer, father and kidnapper… “A man can be many things at once,” she tells Anne. She wonders whether her daughter is ready for the truth. She wonders whether she is ready to tell it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thinking about Eiffel and his daughter is so bittersweet and sad... Thank you for reading! As always it'd be great if you could let me know what you think!   
> (I'm @the-empty-man on Tumblr if you want to scream about Wolf 359 with me there.)


End file.
